Hells Kitchen

half-brother.
    Ettie, she squeezed his arm. “That Billy Doyle . . . Let’s see, my husband and your father. What’s that make us, you and me, John?”
    “Orphans,” Pellam suggested.
    “I was never one to chase after a man. When he left I never thought about going after him. Never looked for him. But I’m curious.” A coy smile. “You ever get any clue where he might’ve gone off to?”
    Pellam shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve tried all the recorders of deeds in the area. No trace.”
    “He talked about going back to Ireland. Maybe he did, who knows?” She added, “There are some of his old friends still around. I see ’em sometimes in some of the taverns. We could maybe talk to some of them if you want. They might’ve heard from him.”
    He’d have to think about that. He couldn’t decide. He looked out the window and saw gray and brown and buff tenements next to squat warehouses next to shimmering high-rises next to the blackened bones of razed buildings.
    West of Eighth . . .
    It occurred to Pellam that Hell’s Kitchen was in some ways just like his search for Billy Doyle: failure not wholly disappointing, hope not wholly desired.
    The white apparition of the Southern nurse who’d tended Ettie last week floated into the room and told Ettie she probably ought to leave.
    “He’s lookin’ a bit tuckered out,” she said with that rasping Texas drawl of hers. Pellam thought she had freckles but his vision was still pretty blurry. She said. “Honey, don’t you feel like restin’ for a bit?”
    “Not really,” Pellam said. Or thought he did. Maybe not. His eyes closed and the glass drooped in his hand. He felt it being taken away, smelled a breath of floral perfume, and then surrendered to sleep.

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    Readers interesed in oral histories of Manhattan and unable to find John Pellam’s documentary, West of Eighth, at their local video stores might wish to read Jeff Kisseloff’s You Must Remember This. This excellent oral history of Manhattan contains a section on Hell’s Kitchen, which Pellam found immensely helpful in researching his own book (as did I in writing this one). Pellam also keeps Luc Sante’s Low Life and Studs Terkel’s Talking to Myself on his bookshelf in his Winnebago.

A LSO BY J EFFERY D EAVER
    Carte Blanche
    Edge
    The Burning Wire*
    Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor)
    The Watch List (The Copper Bracelet and The Chopin Manuscript ) (Contributor)
    Roadside Crosses**
    The Bodies Left Behind
    The Broken Window*
    The Sleeping Doll**
    More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two
    The Cold Moon*/**
    The Twelfth Card*
    Garden of Beasts
    Twisted: Collected Stories
    The Vanished Man*
    The Stone Monkey*
    The Blue Nowhere
    The Empty Chair*
    Speaking in Tongues
    The Devil’s Teardrop
    The Coffin Dancer*
    The Bone Collector*
    A Maiden’s Grave
    Praying for Sleep
    The Lesson of Her Death
    Mistress of Justice
    Hard News
    Death of a Blue Movie Star
    Manhattan Is My Beat
    Hell’s Kitchen
    Bloody River Blues
    Shallow Graves
    A Century of Great Suspense Stories (Editor)
    A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor)
    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Introduction)
    *Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs
    **Featuring Kathryn Dance

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
    An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

    POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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    Copyright © 2001 by Jeffery Deaver
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    ISBN: 0-671-04751-5
    ISBN 13: 9780743424035 (eBook)
    First Pocket Books printing February 2001
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    Cover design and illustration by Tony Greco